What Kind of Business Are You In?

Hey everybody, it's Tara Bryan, and you are listening to the Course Building Secrets podcast. Whether you're a coach or a CEO, the success of your team and clients is based on your ability to deliver a consistent experience and guide them on the fastest path to results. This podcast will give you practical real life tips that you can use today to build your online experiences that get results and create raving fans. Why? So you can monetize your expertise and serve more people without adding more time or team to your business. If you're looking to uncover your million dollar framework, package it and use it to scale you're in the right place. Let's dive in.

Hey, course creators, it is so great to connect with you today. My message today is gonna be a little different. In the sense that it's a little bit more maybe inspirational or mindset focused than usual. One of the things I have been reading or rereading one of the Rich Dad, Poor Dad books, and how there's so much great stuff in there. And I think that every time I reread kind of a foundational book like that, it really gives me some new insights that I didn't have before. So I'm going to share a couple of those with you today. First, this weekend, I was at a service. And it was interesting. The the person who was speaking said, you know, there are two different ways that you can focus your energy, you can either focus on fear and building, and reinforcing the fear that you have, or you can step out in faith. And it was such a good message, especially with all the crap that we're dealing with right now. And things that are going on is when you look at how you show up, do you show up? And you know, there's fear and that stops you? Or do you step out in faith and really think that you know what you believe that you can do the thing that you were meant to do? Do the thing that you want to do? And really be able to step out in faith and belief that that's going to be something that's going to happen that you can make happen? Or do you let the fear stop you?

And I think that for me, it was just a really good reminder, because I have had some things going on lately that have sort of question that for me, in terms of how am I showing up? Where am I putting my energy in my putting my energy in some of the fear that I have about different situations, or am I leading with faith that that I truly believe that everything is going to work out as it should. And so I thought that was just a good place to start as we're looking at this conversation. The other thing is I just was reading an another passage or quote that I wanted to share with you, as I start this as well. And it says when you play small, you cheat everyone, you cheat your clients, you cheat yourself, and you cheat your family and friends. If you have something great to offer people that can really help them it is your duty to help them quit waiting until everything is perfect. It's time is time for you to step out of your comfort in playing small in step into the faith that you can play at a much higher level, you are being called to get into the game. I love that. So again, if if that resonates with you this morning, then re listen to that and really take action start to think about, okay, I have to play bigger, I have to step out of the role of fear, I have to step out of my comfort zone and I need to step into what I am meant to do. So I am not cheating my clients, myself, my friends and my family. So again, super powerful. Okay, so as I kind of reflect on some of the things that I'm rereading in this book, one of the things that comes to me is when I started when I left corporate, I guess I should say first when I left corporate as an employee 17 years ago now. Wow, it's been 17 years. That's crazy. 17 years ago now, I stepped into I said, Well, I'm going to go out and start my own business. I'm going to go and and help more people build courses that make a difference. Really build kind of platforms and infrastructure for learning that helps employees and customers be able to excel get the results that they want to get Going to help more companies do that I had a lot of success doing that as an employee, and I just feel this calling to, you know, help and, and make an impact a little bit differently.

So I went out on my own, and not really knowing a whole lot about what that meant. I took on some will call them gigs at this point, right. So I really went into a self employed role as I you know, when flack reflecting the Rich Dad Poor Dad is that they have you know, employee and self employed, and then business owner, right. So they have kind of the three different categories. So I thought I was going from employee to business owner, which I was, but But essentially, what I started doing was I just went into a self employed role, right, I actually did the same thing I was doing as an employee only on my own for clients. So I would go on site, and I would work on these projects. And then I would move to another project, it was just me. And I started sort of building my expertise. And my proprietary framework in terms of how I did work, how I showed up how I sold what I was offering to people, I started to learn that and I started to, to build that structure framework around the business to start creating those systems. So really went into that self employed role, as I was sort of growing and figuring out different things that I could help people do, which is great. And a lot of times, that's how people start. And and that's a great way to do it. The challenge is, is that eventually you need to move into a business owner role in order to grow and scale and really be able to help more companies, right, because that's sort of what I ended up doing was, I got to a certain point where I was maxed out and I literally had no more time to help additional people. And, and so, you know, if you've listened to my story, you know, that sort of the event that that, that changed things for me, from a mindset perspective was really when my second child was born, and I had my computer on my stomach right after she was born trying to do a client project. And for me, that was the shift that I needed to make to say, wait a minute, there's got to be a different way to build a business that's scalable, and sustainable and doesn't require all of my time. Because time freedom was a big reason why I left corporate when I did was I wanted more time freedom. Well, I didn't really know what that meant, right? I was used to working 40 hours, I thought, well, if I'm doing my own thing, I'll be able to pick and choose when I'm working and how often I'm working and whatever else. Well. If you've ever been in a position of consulting or being self employed, you know that that's not actually the case is that if you are any good, you're you're never at a point where you don't have projects. And and the projects are really dictated by the client in terms of when you show up and how much time they take and the duration and the complexity and all of that. It's not really something that you actually control your time.

So we started to explore Well, what does that look like? How do we get more time freedom? How do we start, you know, growing the business in a different way. So I'm not working, you know, 12 to 15 hours a day, what does that look like? And so we started the transition of really looking at, okay, so I need to hire people, I need to have more people who are helping to support what we're doing. And an evolution of that was okay, great, well help hire people to help me do additional pieces of work, that maybe aren't my specialty, or take me a lot longer to do, then, you know, it would take someone else. So we started to build that way, then we got into the position of well look at everybody's doing a great job, they don't necessarily need me to do it, they need me to help grow the business and really think about strategically how to scale what we were doing. And so then I started into that kind of more business role. The challenge was, is that you know, if you think about it, and this may be something that you're dealing with in your business, which is why I'm talking about it is you know, you're you're still at that place where you're the technician, you're the one who's doing the work, you're the one who specializes in it, and you're the driver of sort of this strategy of how the work is getting done. And and you find yourself in the business more than then you know, kind of on on top of the business or running the business or whatever. And and the challenge with trying to scale a business that way, is you're too close to it right you're too close. To the deliverables, you're too close to what's being produced. And you're trying to scale and this is the problem that we ran into is we're trying to scale a technician business, a self employment business, like a contracting business, by adding more people to it, not changing what we're delivering.

So there's two different directions to think about here. As, as you start to kind of step into, okay, yeah, this has been my problem is, you know, you, you're on that feast and famine roller coaster, you've hired people, but they're not really working in their Zone of genius and you're still in the business, even though you don't want to be right. If you're, you know, having some of these challenges, there are two different things that will help you change the game that will help you play, play a bigger game. The first one is, in order to really grow and scale your business. And it truly, truly, truly believe this is that you actually have to get out of just offering one on one services, or solutions to clients, when you are just offering one on one meaning done for you work only the challenges is that you're always in an hours for dollars model, you're always in a trading time model, which means you're either trading your time or you're trading your team's time for that one on one sort of done for you project. And that's great. Like you can create systems, you can create efficiencies, you can create templates, you can create all sorts of things to speed up that process and try and beat the clock, meaning the time that you're spending is less than the amount of money that you're making on that project. But at some point, there's there's sort of a, you know, a reverse rate of return, right, in terms of the you can't always beat the clock. And honestly, most of the time you hire people, they're not working as quickly as you are. And so, you know, you're always gonna get sort of stuck in that hours for dollars model. And which is great, up until a certain point, you get to a point, you cannot scale that further. So you have to get out of that one on one mentality of that's all you can offer. And that's why you know, things like learn Academy, or you know, our coaching program, or whatever is so powerful, because we help you package what you're doing in a way that allows you to also offer maybe done with you or do it yourself services around your core, offering your core one on one offering. So whether it's your signature program, or it's, you know, somewhere along the sort of lifestyle cycle of your clients, you're able to offer additional things which help start pushing out pushing you out of that hours for dollars model, or that sort of transition you made from being an employee to self employed a business owner is is looking at that.

The second main thing is really looking at what problem are you solving. So often when we go from being an employee to being self employed, we're just taking our skill set and moving our skill set to help more people outside of a company, right? So you're going in as a consultant, you're going in as a team to help provide them that, that service. But, and you're solving a problem, but you're sort of solving that extra pair hands problem, right, where they don't have the expertise, they don't have the the time or the talent in house. And so they're going out to find other people who can fulfill on the work. So you're solving that particular problem. But if you look at how do you solve a problem in the market, that other people aren't solving, that's really where you start to put jet fuel on your expertise is really solving that problem. So if you think about any kind of shift in any industry, that's going on, we could take shipped, or Instacart for an example. So so to be able to come into a market and say okay, so how do we solve a problem that people have in the marketplace, which is you know, time to go shopping time to get food or whatever else and and disrupt that, right? That's solving a problem in a market that doesn't have you know, that particular hasn't ever had that before. That's where the big leaps forward happen. They you've completely decoupled time and money. And you're solving a problem with your expertise versus fulfilling on a project or the extra pair of hands work that you can do as an employee. So you're really able to transition all the way forward from employee to self employed to business owner Really looking at that, from a completely different perspective, helps shift you past that hours for dollars work that one on one work.

So, as I am, again, reflecting on some of the lessons that I'm learning again, in this book is really asking the right questions, asking, Are you building a business system? Are you building something that that helps to solve a problem? Or are you, you know, just creating another job for yourself? Are you just creating more work? Are you putting yourself in a place of just, you know, kind of shifting, basically shifting who's paying you and and who your boss is, right? And eventually, it's really looking at, you know, what is it that you're that you're looking for as you move forward, because some people may just want to say, Stay self employed, and work on projects, and you know, they're doing other things, or whatever else. But you may get to a certain point. And I'm going to tell you that I've worked with dozens of people who are at this point where they've been self employed for a very long time. And they say, Well, what's next? I don't want to keep doing this every single day don't want to keep working 12 to 15 hours a day, there's got to be something else that comes from all of this work that I've been doing, how do I leverage my expertise? How do I leverage what I've been doing, and really start to play a bigger game? Or look at what's what's the next step when I want to stop working all those hours? And unfortunately, you get to a certain point, and that ship has sailed? And so how do you start looking at transitioning your time, your offer and your energy into something that's more sustainable and scalable? And the answer to that is packaging what you're doing in a different way. You can still work one on one, but you also can look at how do you create, you know, in leverage something that's online, so you can help more people? Or how do you automate and package what you're doing? So So it's there without you actively putting in the time? How do you help people on projects without reinventing the wheel each time?

And these are questions that we answer at Learn Academy as we really look at how do you step in to your your zone of genius, and not only help people get results, but help yourself create that lifestyle, that time freedom that you actually we're looking for when you sidestepped to do something a little bit different than going into the office and work working for someone else for all that time? So the question I want to leave you with today, as you're reflecting on, what I'm seeing is, you know, what is your goal is your goal to think about how do you solve that problem that allows you to really help people at the highest level that you have, without putting in 12 to 15 days until you know it until I don't know you're in your 70s? Right. And really looking at what you want out of all of this, it was interesting. There was a somebody was asking on one of the Facebook groups I'm on, you know, I just want to keep things super simple. I just want to stay, you know, a sole proprietor forever, and I own this business. And it's a brick and mortar business in Canada. And it was interesting, because there were, you know, hundreds of comments. And all of them were asking the same thing, right? Like, what is it that you want to achieve? Because you can say like, just want it to be simple and be a sole proprietor, but but the challenge with that is what's the end game then? Right? What are you thinking about doing if your goal when you started your own thing? Was was financial freedom, lifestyle, freedom, time, freedom, more autonomy, all of those different things? Is that getting you closer to your goal? Or is it just allowing you to stay busy? Is it allowing you to have it you know, a little bit of income coming in. But it's not actually achieving any of those freedom goals that you had.

And, and I would challenge that if you're a sole proprietor, you're probably going to run into a situation at some point, if you haven't already, where you're either burnt out, or you you ask that question like What is next? How am I going to you know, enjoy some of the fruits of my labor. And and the way to do that is to start packaging what you're doing in a different way. And so hopefully this serves you today. It's a little bit of a, you know, different kind of Of course bowling secret, but just really felt compelled to share it today, just as as I'm thinking about, you know, where we are in the business where we've been in the business, how do we shift things? How do we look at what the next, you know, 17 years looks like as we shift and grow, and really be able to start asking those questions to make sure that that I'm focused on, you know, lifestyle time and financial freedom, because they're different. All three of those are very different in terms of the objectives, and how to create a business, or how to make money and keep money in order to achieve those goals. So hopefully, this serves you today. Enjoy the rest of your day. And we will talk later this week, I will tell you that we have an awesome guest coming up here and so look for that, and I'm excited to share his story with you. So look for that as the week progresses.